


Held in the Dark

by elizajane



Series: Scollay Under [2]
Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Boston AU, Drabble Collection, Established Relationship, F/F, Femslash, Not Beta Read, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-10-05 08:18:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 46
Words: 4,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17321333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: Edie Brock and Vena in Boston. A year of drabbles that pick up the story ofScollay Under. There is no overarching plot. This will be daily snippets from the life of Edie and Vena. In my defense: femslash + Boston.This fic takes the form of drabbles (100 words each), one drabble per chapter. Each drabble will be written in response to a prompt from this random first line generator:http://writingexercises.co.uk/firstlinegenerator.php.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **NOTE 4/4/2019:** I've obviously been in a writing slump / life happened over the past six weeks. I have not abandoned this project but the drabble prompts stopped being very useful and I need to find another approach. In the meantime, this series of drabbles is still a work in progress. More soon (I hope!). ~ej
> 
> A note about gender and pronouns. I love the variety of approaches to gender in Venom fic. This AU features a middle-aged, cis lesbian woman (Edie) and a symbiote who has had a previous bond with an Italian-American woman (Maria) that was -- like their bond with Edie -- sexually intimate. Venom/Vena switches between we/they nongendered thinking and understanding her singular self in she/her terms. I made this decision because it seemed plausible that having bonded with two human women, Vena would understand themselves in the same language as their hosts. Obviously this is only one way among many to characterize Venom's gender!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: He was successful, attractive and charming.

Chas clearly expects Edie to be charmed by his white dudebro scruff and rumored wealth, despite the fact she's old enough to be his mother and doesn't remotely swing that way. She ignores his vacuous patter, looking around the warehouse-conversion workshare space for the least-worst setting for the “thirty under thirty” photoshoot for  _ Boston Magazine _ she's here for.

She feels Vena stir following her customary afternoon nap.  **_You dislike this human,_ ** Vena observes with a ripple of amusement.

“Yeah, well,” Edie mutters quietly. “A job's a job.”

**_We could return later,_ ** her lover offers,  **_and eat him just a little?_ **


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fire was getting closer.

**_Cat!_ ** Vena sees the black face in a third-story window before Edie or the firefighters. Smoke is seeping out through the screened window where the cat is prowling.

**_Closer, Edie!_ ** If Edie moves to stand around the corner, Vena can climb the building out of sight and…

“On it,” Edie murmurs, stuffing her camera in its bag and moving smoothly up the street.

Vena scales the brick wall the second Edie is in place. She reaches the window, wrenches out the screen, and scoops up the irate creature. Together they descend to the street.

**_Ours now?_ ** Vena asks Edie hopefully.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: He stared hard at the table as he tried to recall his attacker.

The abrasion on Benji's cheek is fading by the time Edie sees it; she pulls him into a hug nonetheless. He rolls his eyes. “ _ Tía _ ,” he protests, but doesn’t pull away. She raises her eyebrows over his head at her sister-in-law.  _ Later  _ Andrea mouths. 

**_You are angry._ ** Vena asks, not quite a question.

_ There was a boy who hit him for being in the boys’ bathroom at school _ , Edie reminds her. Vena had been awake for Andrea's tearful phone call on Tuesday.  _ I am angry Benji was hurt for being different. _

**_Like us,_ ** Vena says with a ripple of understanding.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Someone must have seen him.

_ Someone _ must have seen him, the man who usually spent Wednesday mornings on Boylston St. selling  _ Spare Change News _ . Edie makes sure to have cash because Vena is distressed if they don't buy one. 

But this morning he isn’t there.

**_Ask this human!_ ** Vena says as a person hurries by.  **_Or that one!_ **

“They won't know,” Edie shakes her head. “But maybe --” she sidesteps into the coffee shop. 

“There's a man who usually --” she begins, pointing.

“Frank?” The barista nods. “Oh yeah, just over there having his morning coffee.”

Edie looks over, then back. “Four breakfast sandwiches, please. For here.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She was going back to a place she'd hoped she would never see again.

They find other ways to get around the city, routes that take them to Haymarket or State. They never got on or off the Blue Line at Bowdoin or Government Center. Vena spent a century entombed under City Hall and Edie sees no reason why they should go visit her empty grave. 

But one day in February their D train catches fire.

It's not a particularly dangerous fire. Still, they have to evacuate on foot through the tunnels and Government Center is the closest exit. 

“Wrap yourself around my heart,” Edie murmurs to Vena. “Let me drown out everything else.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She kept checking her phone and email, wishing someone would make contact.

Edie's pouring milk over her granola and Vena is humming an Italian folk song, gently, against the inside of her skin, when she has a sudden, vivid memory. A snowbound winter morning like this, not long after the final, messy breakup with Annie. The city had shuttered for the storm and Edie spent the entire day lying on the futon in her newly-rented basement studio. She had stared at the ceiling and waited for her phone to vibrate with an email, a phone call. Nothing. So she lay there unmoving while the snow blanketed the world in white, cold silence.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: To my cheating wife, I leave...

Vena finds the photograph tucked between the pages of a book: a white woman Vena knows from Edie's memories as Anne. Vena glares at the photo while Edie sleeps beside her and wishes to eat Anne. Edie and Anne had been together for six years. Then, Anne chose another human to share her nest.

Vena chews on Anne's picture and thinks if Anne had still been with Edie when Edie found Vena, Vena _definitely_ would have had to eat her. Edie was _hers_.

Edie rolls over, restless. “Mine,” she murmurs, wrapping herself around Vena's warmth. Vena purrs in the dark.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She opened her handbag and tipped its contents onto the floor.

At times, adjusting to life with Vena feels like the _beingness_ that Edie once understood as herself has become a Mary Poppins handbag: upended to scattering much more of her -- of _them_ \-- out onto the wood floor of her studio apartment than Edie had ever imagined she could contain. Some nights, now, they dream in Italian -- a language Edie has never consciously learned. Some days, walking down a Boston street, she finds they're searching for a long-demolished building; running errands to nonexistent stores. They hunger for dishes she has never eaten. She is now, impossibly, part of an irreducible _we_.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Amongst her mother's possessions she found...

They are in her parents’ basement looking for a box of undergraduate photographs that Edie is hoping to repurpose when the bottom drops out of a cardboard box she's moving and papers scatter across the cement floor.

The papers are in Spanish, mostly; travel documents related to her mother's arrival from Puerto Rico at sixteen, her high school graduation. Exams from nursing school. Letters from Edie's grandparents. Gathering up the jumbled pieces of family history Edie realizes that loving Vena and Maria -- both migrants far from the lands of their birth -- gives her a new understanding of her mother's life.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The old house, with its wildly overgrown garden, was silent, secretive.

The house sprawls like one of the houses they’ve seen on television, room after room, hall after hall, white cloth draped over furniture. Peacocks scream from the lush gardens of tropical flowers, trees dripping with moss and vines, pools of water teaming with fish. If they weren’t dreaming, Vena would eat the fish. And the peacocks too. But they are dreaming. Searching, they’re searching for something.For someone.

Edie. Edie is somewhere in this house.

_ Sweetheart _ .

Where is Edie? Where is…?

_ Sweetheart. Right here. I'm here. We're dreaming.  _ “You're dreaming, V. Wake up.”

Vena blinks, inhales, reaches. Edie is there.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The Ferrari stopped and the tinted window opened to reveal...

Flipping off the Ferrari that cut the corner and flung a wave of salty slush over her boots probably wasn't the most _mature_ decision they ever made. But it was deeply satisfying. Possibly even more so when the driver leaned out at the red light to yell, “Fuck you, bitch!

“Not in your wildest dreams, motherfucker!” Edie yells back because its been that kinda day in that kinda week, month, year, decade and she won't be turning forty-six next week to put up with his brand of bullshit.

Maybe Vena could sneak over for just a _small_ nibble.

Edie smiles.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: When her father was drunk, he'd say 'I used to have a brother, you know', and get a faraway look in his eyes.

The freaky thing about Maria’s memories is that Edie doesn’t _learn_ them, second-hand, from Vena. She _knows_. Not in the way she knows what they ate yesterday, or where they went to watch the sailboats on the Charles the Saturday before last. But in the way she remembers the smell of the wet earth of the playground at her elementary school or the music her older brother played on his car stereo. She knows the drunken, angry voice of Maria's father. She can recite the names of uncles and aunts and cousins. She loves Vena, as herself and as another.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She couldn't believe it. Was it really him?

“This wasn’t a good idea,” Edie sighs. They stare at the computer screen. “Why did I let you talk me into that third glass of coquito?” 

**_Delicious_ ** **.** Vena points out. Edie’s brother Marco had made this wonderful beverage for the family Christmas gathering. They were still feeling languid and warm from drinking it.

The coquito is helps take the edge off Vena’s grief as they look at the results of Edie’s search for Maria’s nephew: an obituary from 1978. With a small tentacle she traces the line of his chin, so like Maria's, on the screen. They have family, somewhere.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The little boy's idea of heaven was...

There is a toddler on their bus, a human child of indeterminate gender who is fascinated by Edie and Vena. The small being keeps laughing and reaching out with tiny hands to grab ahold of something only they can see. Edie wonders, not for the first time, if young humans are better at seeing her inhuman half, even when Vena has hidden away beneath Edie’s clothes and skin. She feels the ripple of Vena’s amusement, then feels the hair-thin tendril Vena extends to twine around the child’s fingers in greeting. The child laughs again, their beleaguered parent none the wiser.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: They couldn't be allowed to fight.

Anne had never acknowledged they were fighting. It had always been a “discussion” or something Edie had “misunderstood.” In retrospect, the long hours Edie spent working in coffee shops and libraries had been a strategy for avoiding the exhausting weight of Anne's silent critique.

It had still felt like failure when Anne kicked her out. Edie’s mother certainly saw it that way.

Fighting with Vena is different. Better. _So_ much better. Even when they’re shouting at each other Edie feels the pulse of _won’t leave don’t leave won’t leave_ under her skin.

“I won’t,” she whispers in return. “I won’t.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "This is what we do with the horses," she said.

Edie photographs the wedding while Vena observes from behind Edie’s left ear, as black as Edie’s hair and shaped like a wireless earpiece. Every so often she nibbles, lovingly, on Edie’s earlobe just because.

The brides arrive on horseback to applause from the guests. Bonding between two humans, Vena reflects, is much more complicated than her bond with Edie. But more visible. She licks a tiny kiss along Edie’s helix, thinking. Edie shivers beneath her, around her.

 ** _If I were human, we could bond like this?_** She asks, hesitantly.

“Yes,” Edie says, without hesitation. “Except I’ll never agree to horses.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The entrance to the tunnel was their only way out.

Traffic slows to a crawl at the mouth of the O'Neill Tunnel. Edie groans: “Fuck, fuck,  _ fuck _ .” Too late to turn around now. Whether an accident, road construction, or just a Bruins game, they’ll be inching along to their exit off the freeway.

Vena's claustrophobia aches in her chest. The tunnel was manageable at speed, but now that they're stuck at a crawl...

“I never cared much for moonlit skies,” Edie begins a jazz standard Grandpa Brock used to sing dancing her around the kitchen. “I never wink back at fireflies, but now that the stars are in your eyes...”


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She had missed the last train.

The flight had been delayed in Cleveland. Not long, but just long enough that when they reach Logan the last train has already passed through Airport Station for the night. A year ago, Edie would have caught a cab without hesitation. But it’s a beautiful night: clear, with a full moon. The cold February air feels clarifying in their lungs after too many hours in airport terminals and cramped economy cabins. She feels her lover stretching like a waking cat.

“Hey,” she murmurs to Vena. “Shall we go for a walk and find a good place to watch the sunrise?”


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The whole family had been cursed.

Vena presses her face into the comfort of Edie’s neck as the on-screen exorcism begins. 

“Are stories about demonic possession stories about beings like you?” Edie asks, curious, smoothing a hand over Vena's surface.

**_Don't know._ **

“Should I stop the movie?”

Vena shakes her head but presses closer. She has been on earth a long time. Have there been others? Have they been violent? Have they destroyed their hosts ...or been destroyed in the attempt? She thinks, maybe, that is what she was  _ meant _ to have done.

Will they try to drive her away?

“I won't let them,” Edie whispers


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The policeman draws back the sheet.

Across from the picket line, Edie loiters with her camera. It's raining steadily but Vena is doing a credible umbrella imitation above her, keeping the equipment bag dry. The strikers march on.

The beefy policeman on the corner escorts every white girl past the picketers, lifting the wet plastic construction site sheeting out of their way with a nod.

Edie’s brown skin and leather jacket have won her more than one overlong look from Mr. Congeniality over there. She’s been noticed. That’s okay. She and Vena have noticed him right back. She snaps another photo just to prove the point.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: As the gate closes behind them they see someone waiting.

The snow howls mercilessly across the Charles and up Massachusetts Avenue. They duck into the T station, even though home is a bare fifteen minute walk away

On the far side of the fare gates stands a small, brown-skinned woman in a sari selling red roses for two dollars each. Edie gives her a twenty dollar bill and accepts the eight flowers the woman has left, refusing change. 

Once home, Edie finds a glass jar in the cupboard, snips the stems, and places  the roses on the table: a brilliant splash of color as dark descends.

“Our anniversary,” she explains.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The girl shouldn't have been fired but if she says anything...

_ It's bullshit, Aunt Edie!!!!  _ Theresa texts her on Tuesday.  _ He came up with an excuse bc he wanted to give his gf a promotion. >:( _

**_She is right?_ ** Vena asks as Edie rage-cleans around their apartment.  **_If we cannot eat him_ ** \-- Vena and Maria had eaten at least one rapey shift supervisor --  **_we could have the boss fire him?_ **

Edie sighs. “I can't  _ do  _ anything. She can't prove it was harassment.”

Vena is quiet while Edie finishes loading the dishwasher and slams the door shut.

**_Brownies?_ ** Vena finally suggests.  **_With Nutella._ **

Edie laughs. “Yeah, okay. You start baking; I'll text Theresa.”


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: His solution to the problem of having two children to care for, was to find another woman to do the job. [This guy sounds like an asshole, so the prompt fill is more gentle.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the silence this week; I had some things come up at work that took more time and attention than anticipated. Hoping to catch up and get back on track for daily drabbles this coming week!

“Connor.  _ Connor! _ ” 

Edie and Vena are walking along the river when a young child on a bicycle pedals furiously past them, followed by a man in a sweater and knit cap, an infant strapped to his chest.

“Sorry, sorry,” he mutters as he passes them. “He's just learned to --  _ Connor! _ ”

The last is called urgent as the child hits a root pushing up through the pavement and tips toward the edge of the Charles. Vena shoots a tentacle out of Edie’s coat sleeve and stops the descent.

**_Keep walking,_ ** she reminds Edie,  **_and they will forget what they just saw._ **


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Please come, for my sake.

Vena shares Edie’s orgasms, of course: the arousal, the peak, the release. She also has orgasms of her own for Edie to discover, to map, to repeat again and again. Edie loves making Vena come. Different tentacles manifest for different purposes, and there are tentacles that emerge only when they’re making love. Deep amaranthine, achingly sensitive, they grow thick with arousal, slick and warm to her touch as Edie slides fingers through them, urges Vena to her lips. Vena tastes sweet like rainwater and a hint of volcanic ash. The wave crests through them both, and the tentacles are gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Amarinthine](https://icolorpalette.com/color/amaranthine/).


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She knew she must keep very still while she waited.

How closely Vena attends to what she gleans from Edie varies. Sometimes, she finds, it is more pleasurable to practice selective inattention. To let herself be surprised when Edie touches her  _ there _ , breathes unanticipated words against her surface  _ here _ as they twine together on the bed; their body, for now, more two than one. It’s frightening, to hold still and wait as Edie gazes down upon her. Frightening to have no certain understanding of what Edie  _ sees _ . Frightening in a way that fills Vena with heat and fullness and emptiness and want.  **“** **_Please, Edie,”_ ** she must speak her need aloud.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The footsteps were moving away.

Edie dreams of footsteps pursued through a cavernous house with many long hallways and deserted rooms. When Vena wakes she hears the footfalls soft, methodical,along the alley behind their row of tall, well-kept brownstones. The steps move steadily closer. 

She slides from Edie’s body without waking her and moves silently across the room to press her form against the cold window.

A white human male is peering into the laundry room on Vena’s left. He steps back and turns toward their window. She spreads across the glass, blinks open her eyes and lets her teeth descend. **_Hello, uninvited one_.**


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She went to the bathroom and on her way back, opened the wrong door.

Edie goes to her physical because she’ll lose a $300 insurance rebate if she doesn’t. Money’s too tight. The problem is, Vena can’t answer the questions Edie frets over: Will they find you in my bloodwork? During my mammogram? My pelvic exam? She’s just planning to keep paying for levothyroxin tablets: there is no way to explain how her irradiated thyroid has begun functioning again. She’s so distracted keeping Vena’s hospital-related panic in check that on her way back from the restroom she nearly walks into the wrong exam room. “God,” she mutters, “this day can’t be over fast enough.”


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Half the names on the list had already been crossed off.

The wall above Edie’s cluttered desk has slowly come to resemble those murder boards on the police procedurals. They couldn’t say in human words why it matters, to them, to piece together the surviving scraps of Maria's life. She’s clear in their memories. An immigration record here, a census entry there -- they don’t need these things to prove Maria existed, that she walked the streets of Boston, worked in her uncle’s grocery, lived with her brother, his wife, their baby. Yet Vena and Edie want them anyway. Vena traces the ink of Edie’s lists, wonders whom they will find next.


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She barely recognised him for the bruises.

They nearly pass over the faded Kodak snapshot in the third scrapbook the archivist for the archdiocese brings out to them. It's a volume from the 1920s, and the photographs on the page are young men at a sports day. Alessandro is the one in boxing gloves, with a shiner of a bruise on his cheekbone and a triumphant grin on his face. The recognition, when it comes, is staggering: They remember his laugh, the stink of his clothes after a day in the railyard, the way he cradled his infant niece. 

“I can identify this man,” Edie says, pointing.


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She realised the child had seen them.

Maria stood on the crowded street corner waiting for the omnibus laden with passengers to pass. A policeman on a platform at the center of chaos, with a whistle and flag, made not the slightest impression on the drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians who fought their way through the freezing slush. 

A small boy darted out just as an automobile surged forward into the same brief opening the child had seen. Before Maria could do more than inhale sharply, Vena plucked the child up and dropped him back on the curb; Maria smiled as Vena’s glare cut off his rising outrage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers were asking for more Maria so ... :-)
> 
> Automated traffic lights and many other traffic regulations commonplace today were developed in the 1920s; prior to that, busy intersections were often manually regulated (if regulated at all) by city police on platforms similar to lifeguards. This [1921 street scene from Boston's business district](https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/6308866511/in/album-72157627919133569/) shows the crush of foot traffic, horses, and automobiles on a spring day with the policeman on duty in his perch toward the center of the frame.


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She waited until her husband was out of the room, then…

Maria waited until her brother left for the work in the morning before stripping to the waist and washing at the sink in their tiny kitchen while Lucia fed the baby, crooning to him in Italian. Meagre light filtered in through soot-darkened glass, but the motions of washing are familiar enough. Where Lucia cannot see, Vena slid between Maria’s breasts, caressing her dark nipples as they pulled taut from the cold wash water -- then tauter from Vena’s attentions. Maria bit her lip to hold in the sigh, though that wouldn’t stop Vena from knowing how the touch felt. _So good._


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: They had a lot of freedom back then.

Being with Edie is re-learning humanity through someone very different from Maria. Vena will never say whom she loves or understands better; it is nonsense question. Maria and Edie are two halves of a whole: the humans Vena has become a part of; who have become a part of her. 

Maria had been much younger when Vena met her. A child. Yet already tough, unforgiving, wary. She had understood and welcomed the ruthlessness that had allowed Vena to survive until they found her. Together, Vena and Maria had forged their own freedom by eating those who tried to harm them.


	33. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: As the dream faded, she chased it, forlorn.

Edie wakes slowly, reluctantly in the still-dark hour of a February morning. She feels Vena stirring too: a languid stretch and roll somehow inside and against her simultaneously. They're warm beneath the duvet, even without a t-shirt. Edie used to run cold but Vena keeps them comfortable no matter the weather. And she loves it when Edie is naked so they sleep, entangled, skin to skin. She has work to get done, but all of it at her desk while the snow falls outside. They can afford to linger, chasing the dream-wisps of desire until they become urgent, awake, alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got sick a couple of days last week and am still playing catch up. Hoping to get the drabbles back on a daily write-and-publish schedule by the end of the weekend! <3


	34. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: That summer seemed to last forever.

Each May, when the trees in the Boston Public Garden begin to flower, Vena remembers her first wondrous summer on earth. Maria had just turned fourteen, a superfluous daughter sent to her uncle in America. She had little English but was quick with numbers. She rose before dawn to spend long hours at Uncle Guillermo’s grocery: adding up purchases and making change. Vena watched and listened. At night they returned to the tenement to help Aunt Paulina with the children. Sometimes, long after the rest were asleep, Maria and Vena would climb to the roof and name all the stars.


	35. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The house wasn't the same to her any more.

Edie’s parents still live in the house in Newton where Edie had grown up: a sedate single-family home on a quiet cul-de-sac where Edie and her brothers had been the only brown children. It still rankles that her parents never considered that a problem.

 ** _You are unhappy_** , Vena observes as they stand at the curb. Edie has put off this moment nearly three months since their … meeting? Melding?

 _You’ve met my mother_. She sighs. But Vena slides a comforting tendril around her wrist and Edie realizes that the drag of parental expectation has weakened. She no longer faces this alone.


	36. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: They sat in the chair, staring into space, while the kids charged around.

Perhaps it’s progress that Edie's mother waits until after the birthday cake to bring it up.

“You could still adopt, you know,” she sighs wistfully, watching Aurelia wriggle, naked, out of Marco’s grasp and run shrieking across the living room.

They catch Aurelia and turn her back toward Marco.

_ I will not respond. _

**_We will not respond?_ **

“Children with gay parents turn out just fine,” her mother continues. Marco rolls his eyes, opens his mouth to jump in, but Edie shakes her head.

_ Not worth it. _

“I'm happy, Mom,” she says.

**_We're_ ** **_happy._ ** Vena holds her beneath their hoodie, content.


	37. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The best way to cut the woman down to size would be to flirt with her husband.

Maria and Vena dislike Mrs. Pappalardo, the butcher’s wife. She comes into Uncle Guillermo’s grocery often, always finding cause for complaint: they have weighed the cheese carelessly, the pepper is too mild, the garlic is not fresh. Maria knows this is jealousy: she has seen the way Mr. Pappalardo looks at them when he tips his hat in the street, when they arrive at Sunday mass. If she were spiteful, she might smile coyly in return. Mrs. Pappalardo certainly believes she already has. But they have seen his hands on other girls and do not wish his hands on them.


	38. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: They had to work together so they were going to have to learn to get along.

Nothing in her life has prepared Edie for this, she thinks, as she strips in her tiny bathroom. In the mirror she sees what she has always seen: medium brown skin, a few scars. Stretch marks. She should look as changed as she feels.

"May I...see you?” She whispers. She can  _ feel  _ them listening.

They hesitate.

**_We are not..._ ** The being stops.

"Not...?”

A ripple of frustration.

**_We are not … the same._ **

Humans have not reacted well in the past, Edie suddenly understands. As if she had already known.

“I am not afraid,” she says. “Please. Let me see.”


	39. Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She sat down and held her close.

Vena is beautiful. Iridescent blackness that is somehow an absence of color and every color simultaneously. A darkness that could consume Edie and fill her to the brim, more herself than she ever imagined.

“Oh.” She breathes, watching her hand in the mirror stroke down. _Oh._ She repeats, as Vena's black tendrils follow after. Obsidian rivulets over curves of breasts, belly, hips.

Vena twines around her shoulders, tugging her out of the bathroom, across to the bed, sink down to pull Edie into her and rise like smoke to gaze down from above. Opalescent eyes --  _ huge  _ \-- blink open.  **_Yes?_ **

“Yes.”


	40. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She stood absolutely still as the footsteps grew louder.

Edie hears footsteps behind them. This early in the evening, even on a bitter winter’s night, pedestrians along Commonwealth are hardly unusual. She doesn’t realize the sound has caught Vena's attention until they're turning right, into an alley, and she’s being held absolutely still.

Waiting for _prey._

 _Don't eat the humans,_ she teases silently.

 **_Spoilsport,_** Vena grumbles back. **_He wants to harm you._ **

The footsteps grow louder and suddenly the man is there, in front of them.

“Now be a good --” he begins. Then stumbles back with a strangled sound as Vena looks up with a smile. 

_**A good game.** _

 


	41. Chapter 41

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The victim had tried to write something as he was dying.

_ Il demonio  _ the man had whispered, spitting blood, before Vena ate his head. 

“Si. Siamo demoni,” Maria says to the blood-stained earth. He had beaten his wife and drowned his neighbor’s dog. They feel no remorse.

There had been a time, many years ago, when Maria had shaken and wept at the realization that she was demon-possessed. She had gone to confession but the priest did not believe her. The demon refused to show itself and Maria returned home, sure the demon was a punishment from God.

Vena still possesses her, and Maria no longer believes in a punishing God.


	42. Chapter 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She decided to go to her father's grave and ask his advice.

There may be others like her on this planet -- others who arrived and became one with their hosts rather than consume them. Vena sometimes dreams of a day when they will pass a stranger on the street and  _ know _ . 

Her parent-being, what she remembers of them, would not understand the queer, hybrid thing Vena has become: A strange diet, an alien lover, a rich kaleidoscope of scent and taste and touch and sound in registers they would never have bothered to learn.

Vena would happily dance upon their distant grave in joy for the life she chooses again, and again.


	43. Chapter 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She'd been this way before.

“You and Maria,” Edie says, softly, stroking warm hands down Vena's sides. “I remember.”

Vena presses her face to Edie's neck. She is relearning this, to be separate and together. Everything raw and exposed yet also … muted. It is harder, this way, to know what Edie thinks and feels.

She echoes Edie’s strokes, mapping her lover's broad hips, the flesh of her thighs, the heat building between them. Edie shivers. Vena forms a mouth to press kisses along Edie's jaw.

 **_I also remember._ ** She admits. **_You are alike yet … different._ **

“I know,” Edie says. “I _want_ us to remember her.”


	44. Chapter 44

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She turned and nearly fell over.

“Oh my God -- Steve!” They turn with their coffee in hand and nearly trip into him where he stands waiting for his order. 

Edie hasn’t seen him since The Breakup, first because fucking depression and then because he'd been Anne's co-worker first and it had seemed destined to be awkward.

But Steve clearly doesn't feel the same.

"Edie, honey!” He already has his arms open and through force of goodwill turns their stumble into a hug. “How have you been darling? You look  _ fine _ !”

“I am, actually,” Edie says, smiling. “I'm -- good. It's been good. Are you free for lunch?”


	45. Chapter 45

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The boy hadn't spoken since his twin had left.

The living statue stands on a wooden box painted silver before Quincy Market. He hasn’t moved since his partner, standing about six feet to their right on a matching box, stepped down and disappeared inside for a bathroom break or some other errand. 

Vena lifts their cup of rich hot chocolate to their lips and Edie smiles. They sit, unhurried, in the winter sun among sparse clusters of tourists and wait for the missing statue’s return.

Eventually, he reappears. Edie lets Vena find five dollars in their coat pocket to drop in the basket. The pair begin their mirrored dance.


	46. Chapter 46

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: She suddenly realized she might be alone for the rest of her life.

“Okay, honey, spill.” Steve leans conspiratorially over his pancakes. “Who is she?”

“What?” Edie falters, coffee halfway to her lips.

“You’ve obviously met someone,” Steve points his fork. “So  _ tell _ me.”

“I …” she stops, realizing Steve is the first person to trip them with a direct question, one Edie can’t wave away. It washes over her, then, for real, though she and Vena have acknowledged the permanence in dozens of whispers, caresses, and shared dreams. She needs an answer to Steve's question. And for all the cueious Steves who follow. Because she'll be “alone” for the rest of her life.

**Author's Note:**

> Work title is from "[Better Days](https://emmasrevolution.com/track/1280860/better-days)" by Emma's Revolution:
> 
> We are born, in the dark  
> We are fed, in the dark  
> We connect, in the dark  
> Through the veil 
> 
> We are held, in the dark  
> We are healed, in the dark  
> Mysteries, in the dark  
> We reveal

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Venom and her host](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17869127) by [fannishliss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss)




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